Page 6 of My Last Dance

I quickly stole my hands away from my legs. My heart thudded in my chest. I couldn’t lie to him, not about this, so I chose to stay silent.

His face fell. “Piper.” He said my name like he was disappointed, like I should know better.

“I know.” My throat burned with all the emotions I was desperately trying to bottle up. I pulled my knees up to my chest andburied my head, trying to breathe deep.

“No, P…I’m sorry.” A second later, he had his strong arms around me, hugging me tightly. “Everything will be okay.”

“How can you say that?” My voice wobbled and I hated it. Letting out a grunt of frustration, I smoothed my hands into my hair to get ahold of myself.

“I think we need to take a break,” he said, and my chest pretty much caved in. “I want to go home.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said automatically.

“Piper.” He blew out a sigh.

“Let’s go train in Montreal for a little,” I offered. “I’m serious. Maybe we just need a change of scenery.”

“You’d do that?” He eyed me hesitantly. “For how long?”

“As long as you want,” I said quickly. Did he not realize how desperately I wanted this to work? I’d do anything, move anywhere, to skate with him. “I’ll stay until the Olympics if that’s what it takes, Patrick.”

His shoulders heaved with a breath. “Okay, yeah,” he finally said. “Let’s just go there and…and see how it goes.”

He didn’t sound confident, but I’d take what I could get. I rolled my lips together and nodded, because if I spoke, I was going to cry, and I was done crying for the rest of my life after Grand Prix.

“Hey, I didn’t make a final decision, okay? I think…” He rubbed his forehead. “I think I need some time off, some time away from here.” He gestured around us. “I need a mental break.”

I nodded, trying my best to suck it up. I mustered up the best smile I could, even though my eyes were still stinging.

Standing, he grabbed up his skate bag. “Want me to wait for you?”

Plastering a pathetic smile on my face, I shook my head at him.

When I finally exited the locker room, I could’ve kicked myself for not walking out five minutes earlier with Patrick, because of course I was now leaving at the same time as the Windy City Whalers players, which included Colt, Kappy, and their other best friend, JP.

“Hey Piper,” Colt gave me a kind smile. While Colt wasn’t my biggest fan when we were teens, we now had a cordial relationship, probably because Mer told him that I was the one who encouraged her to keep an open mind when it came to them rekindling things.

I nodded at him and kept up my break-neck pace even though my calf muscles were screaming at me to slow down. I just wantedto get the fuck out of the rink before a run-in with Richard Charles Kappers the Third. I didn’t have the mental bandwidth for a conversation—or more realistically, an argument—with him today.

But right as I passed the concession stand, a couple tween hockey boys in travel warm-up sweatsuits pointed at me and fake-cried, making me stutter to a stop.

The old me would’ve ripped into them and made them rue the day.

But after this week, I felt like a ragdoll that’d been thrown into the mud and backed over by a truck a couple hundred times. I just stared blankly at them, which of course, made them laugh harder.

The rink had always been my safe space. While I wasn’t necessarily liked here, I wasfeared, damnit. Now it felt like my dignity was squashed and there was no place left in the world for me to feel strong.

“Hey,” an angry voice barked at them, making them jump and drop their jaws in shock.

My neck whipped around.

Kappy’s face was thunderous as his long stride carried him to the concession stand. Wearing jogging shorts and a dark blue Whalers T-shirt stretched over his broad, muscular shoulders, his longish hair was damp with sweat, like he just finished a workout. “Your whole team cried like little babies after you lost States last year,” he said, pointing his water bottle at the tweens. “And that was nothing compared to her level of competition. Watch who you’re making fun of, got it? She’s an Olympian.”

My limbs went a little shaky at his intensity. The world felt like it’d been tipped upside down. Because Kappy, who was usually the first person to tease me…wasdefendingme?

Looking scared shitless, the tweens buttoned up their mouths and nodded.

“Apologize,” he demanded.

---